


noro.

by drippycandle



Category: Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon & Comics)
Genre: & uses she/her, F/M, Reader Insert, Reader is dfab, baby's first second person pov fic, but also kind of an oc, chapters will progress as i get around to it, will update tags as chapters progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-18
Updated: 2019-10-18
Packaged: 2020-12-22 15:30:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21079112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drippycandle/pseuds/drippycandle
Summary: little lightlead us through the nightand if we dieburn down the forest✯let's take a stroll through the Unknown. does a game of wits truly have any players?





	noro.

**Author's Note:**

> hi, i haven't written fanfic in years. it's also... an unholy hour, at the time of my finishing & posting this. oops.
> 
> i have plans for a number of future chapters, but i'm not sure how actually shippy (so to speak) this will or will not get, despite my listing it in the tag... so if you came strictly looking for that content, i'd say definitely stray away from this one for now and maybe come back later? ;w;
> 
> feedback (on either of these ends, but also just in general) would be really really appreciated! i hope you all enjoy! <3

_what we saw in the woods today_  
_repeat 60 cycle delay._

☽

In the pitch-black night, there are a number of things you can make out as you traveled. The specific array of branches on the barren trees above you, the direction from which the wind caresses your face, the faint downtrodden-ness of the crisp, patchy grass beneath your boots--

All of this tells you you’ve been here before. This is a path already taken - one that you’ve circled around to.

A bitter, icy wind, billowing from behind, attempts to usher you on regardless.

If not for the basket that you were physically toting along as you made your way through the woods, you were halfway certain that you would have forgotten your purpose for originally daring to venture into them entirely; exhaustion and fear, working in tandem, would have claimed it just as they had effectively claimed your mettle some time ago. Frigid, rosy cheeks, a damp, dirty cloak, and a small, ordinary basket filled full with three apples and two loaves of bread that you held tightly to your chest beneath your cloak as though the spoiling of that food would mean the end of your life-- you were quite a sight to see.

Yet even as your breath comes to you in short, hot gasps… you know what you have to do. That does not, however, mean that you are magically without fear.

At the tavern - at the closest place you have to a home - you are the Messenger. You roam the woods - and beyond - delivering letters and packages to the people of the Unknown. Growing up here in the Unknown meant that you knew to beware the Beast before you knew how to read or write. Your time spent at the tavern, as you eked out your name, introduced you to all sorts of people, and many of them had one thing in common, if nothing else: family, friends, or loved ones lost to the Beast.

Never before were you allowed to set out on any deliveries past sundown, but you were no longer a child, and had grown into enough of a woman to argue that you could hold your own in the woods, if just for this one night… despite harboring more than enough reservations of your own.

But that solid, externalized faith in yourself that everyone back home exasperatedly ceded to was fading fast.

And just before you can grit your teeth and force yourself onward, a deep, honeyed voice calls out from somewhere in the trees, “The sun set a long while ago, traveller.”

Shadows, all around you - you notice for the first time that night that though the sun had indeed set, there was no moon. You could not make out any stars through the holes in the blotchy canopy.

Had it always been _so_ dark? Had you been too tired to tell?

“Setting out so late, all on your lonesome, exposed to the darkness of the night… without so much as a torch to light your way.” The voice, somewhere between wistful and exasperated, quietly sighs.

And then you find it in you to respond, much to even your own surprise, moments before the voice was to go on. To open air, you say, “Sir, thank you for your concern. I appreciate it. But I’ve really got to be on my way - and the dark’s exactly why.”

A beat of unreadable quiet. Another gale rises and subsides.

You add, “Surely you understand.”

“Of course,” Comes the unwavering response, “A brazen young woman such as yourself would never throw herself headlong into a situation that she could not handle. That said, she knows well the dangers of the woods at night… doesn’t she?”

“Sh-She--” The cold steals the cool from your tongue-- “She does. And--”

“--_Surely,_ she knows who she is talking to. And she knows that she wishes to live.”

And she does. And she knows that she does.

You do.

You are not, however, given the chance to affirm this.

The Beast, lurking just out of sight, presses on.

“She must be freezing. Miserable. Outright impatient, even… to get this arduous task over with, and then go back home. Returning to an exasperated family, and a warm bed.”

“...But I digress. That is a far cry from the matter at hand.”

A pair of eyes, gleaming white and ethereal as the full moon, open up, no more than a few paces ahead of you. Their soft, sharp glow makes it even harder to focus on anything in the desolate woods than it already was, but squinting hard rewards you with the faintest silhouette of a lean, harrowing figure with a pair of twisted antlers mounted on its head.

He stands much taller than you do. He stares down at you intently.

“It is dark. At this rate, you will no doubt lose yourself, no matter how well you know these woods by day.”

Your breath catches in your throat, and hoarseness brought on by the nighttime chill causes you to choke on it. The Beast stands by idly, patiently, as you hack your interruption away.

Once you finish, he simply states, “Perhaps we can make a deal.”

You share a moment with him; your blood runs cold, but you meet his eyes. Whatever leverage you could possibly dredge up on a dime, he could flip on its head just as fast. Do you have any choice but to indulge him - to hear him out?

In all honesty, you don’t get the chance to come to your own conclusion either way. His figure fades into the woods, weaving between trunks and branches as though he is either one with them or phasing right through them. A hasty, remorseful part of you knows that it’s his way or the highway. You’d been trying to find a way out - or, at least, a way to get back on track - for hours. And, after all...

Who would know these woods better than their Beast?

Low-hanging branches brush your sides and tug at your clothes as you follow after him, and the frostbitten earth crunches beneath your feet with each step. The faint, dappled aura coming from his eyes as he goes lingers just long enough for you to track. It’s not a chase, nor is it a slow and deliberate enough movement to constitute a lure - wherever it is that he is taking you, you realize with a somber crease of your brow, he is genuinely just leading you there. You walk of your own volition, at a pace only modestly more brisk than you’d like. Of course, what would become of you should you back down and try to run is just as hopeless a thought as is dealing with whatever giving in to this temptation posed for you by the Beast may have you ending up with…

Eventually, you can make out a bit more of the environment than usual, just ahead - right as the Beast manifests a short ways away from something, just out of range of the light being cast by it. Seemingly springing up from the comparatively sparse ground of a small clearing...

It’s a reddish, ornate lantern, lying ajar there on the ground. Beside it, a simple woodcutting axe - used, but far from being in a state of disrepair.

A thin trickle of hot oil drips from where the clasp is open. A fire, nearly white-hot, dances inside.

As you freeze up, his eyes bore into yours.

And after what feels like an eternity, your answer barely escapes your chapped lips.

“No.”

With each passing second spent in his presence, you find that you are fighting an uphill battle for your composure. If the songs had ever lied, you would have lost far fewer friends to the clutches of the woods in your past.

“Please… I can’t.” As you shake your head, the handle of your basket clutched tight, the Beast’s tilts, just so. “There’s too many people relying on me back home. They’re - c-counting on me… I can’t…”

He’s dead silent.

When you take a mortified step backwards, he doesn’t move.

Only when the moment stretches on too long - and perhaps it seemed like you were earnestly about to take advantage of it and bolt - does the Beast offer further commentary.

“You cannot… What? What is it that you can’t do, traveller?” He asks, “I have yet to propose any deal. Although, I do have one for you. Its terms are simple.”

You swallow, hard, as his murky figure shifts beyond your focus. When it reconfigures, it is directly parallel to you, distantly straight behind the lantern and axe. Looming over them all the same.

“Take on the task of lantern bearer, and safeguard yourself on this night and all other nights like it with a beacon.”

Before you can muster up the courage to voice your biggest grievance, it is acknowledged. “Or, you could… refrain, and perish alone, in the dark.”

“The recipient of the package you carry now would never know of it. Nor would any of those people that rely on you so heavily ever hear from you again… And you would, inevitably, wind up merely as fuel for my lantern, one way or another.”

Judging by his next words, you must have made a face. “Oh? Do not take me for a fool, traveller. I am not blind. You traverse my forests nearly every day, running your errands. Yes, I know you, and I know your people. And what they have told you.”

“What you see is my lantern. And, beside it, a means to an end.”

The feet that you step forward with, one in front of the other, had both gone numb some time ago, yet your hesitance bleeds through to them nonetheless.

The Beast’s eyes smolder expressionlessly, not unlike the flame in the lantern that you find yourself reluctantly drawn to, as you approach. “Take the lantern, the axe, and go. Its light will be of no use to you in your travels if it is extinguished, and it can only be fed by the trees of oil.”

His lofty insistence smothers your urge to refute him, leaving only a new type of fear that seems to have ingrained itself as deeply into your person as have the roots of the trees in this forest into the earth… and a dogged, ardent sort of determination.

The handle of the lantern fits nicely into one of your hands. The axe, on the other hand, is workable, but not ideal - the goodie basket has been slightly displaced in the midst of positioning all of this. And, as you situate yourself, the Beast merely observes from afar.

It then dawns on you that parting words couldn’t hurt anyone - not any more so than you will already be doing in prolonging the life of a man-eating, soul-sucking Beast to serve your own ends while you’re at it, at any rate. The two of you are quiet for a spell, as you hold in your hand the latest in a series of burdens imposed upon you, and as he urgently ponders what, exactly, you will do with it in the near future.

There is something that unsettles you more and more about the streak of oil still smeared on the front of the lantern from the earlier spill, but the flame is warm regardless, albeit not as warm as it looks like it should be. Still, it’s far better at staving off the cold than nothing.

You heft the axe over one shoulder, resting blade-up. “...Beast?”

No response, save a vague feeling of intensity.

“I am not the Traveler. I am the Messenger.” Meekness permeates in your voice the moment that you let the words go, and it takes you by surprise equally as much as it tempts the black spots at the edge of your vision. “And I will… take this with me. Thank you for the light… and getting me out of that loop.”

The antlers, the eyes, and the shape are gone. The feeling of unbridled dread, however, is not.

You’ll have time to ruminate on the matter after you ferry your hopelessly late bread bundle through the woods.

Soon enough, you’re gone, too.


End file.
